


All Dressed Up, Going Nowhere Fast

by clotpolesonly



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Anxiety, College, Gen, House Party, Post-Canon, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Social Anxiety
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-08
Updated: 2019-04-08
Packaged: 2020-01-05 20:03:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,934
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18373112
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/clotpolesonly/pseuds/clotpolesonly
Summary: It's just a random party, the first one he's gone to since he finally made it to college. There are no threats. But itfeelslike there are. Or like there will be. Like therehasto be one, somewhere, and Scott just can’t see it yet.





	All Dressed Up, Going Nowhere Fast

**Author's Note:**

> inspired by that Stalia scene in canon where Stiles says he hates parties ("it's a social anxiety thing") even though, early in the show, Stiles had been super eager to go to parties! something changed in the meantime, and i figure that something was probably all the super traumatic shit that happened at the parties he did go to. and he was far from the only one with a bunch of fucked up party experiences.
> 
> so here is the best friends commiserating about how fucked up their lives are, for Scott Appreciation Week! ~~one day late because i was barely on the computer yesterday aaaand forgot to post~~

Scott thumped his forehead against his open textbook. Sadly, it did not beam the information directly into his brain like he’d hoped it would. He’d been trying to get through this chapter for forty-five minutes already, his eyes skimming it over and over and over, but apparently he had reached maximum capacity where anatomy was concerned. That was what happened when you tried to study for six hours straight.

“Dude, you look rough.”

Reluctantly, Scott peeled himself off the page and turned to make a face at his roommate, lounging on his bed with a book in hand. When Luis didn’t retract the statement, he groaned.

“I’ve got three exams coming up.”

“In, like, two weeks,” Luis pointed out.

“Yeah. And I want to, like, _not fail them._ ”

Luis rolled his eyes, snapping his book shut. “You couldn’t fail them if you tried,” he said. “You’ve been inhaling that subject for weeks already. If you’re not careful, you’re gonna choke on it.”

Scott made another face, more disgusted than disgruntled this time.

“I’m just saying,” Luis pushed on, “there _is_ such a thing as over-studying. You’re not going to pick up anything new when you’re like this. What you need is a break.”

Scott wanted to protest. He wanted to bury himself in books and diagrams and notes until he proved to himself that coming back to school two years late was worth it. That his choice to leave Beacon Hills—and his pack—under his allies’ care and try to have a real, functional, semi-normal life for himself now that Monroe had been dealt with and things had calmed down wasn’t some big selfish mistake.

But he was tired. It felt like he’d done nothing but study all semester, which was still a little surreal. With his high school career being what it was, that he’d gotten this far in college without something disastrous happening was practically a miracle. Who knew how long the peace would last? Shouldn’t he be making the most of it? What if he took the night off to goof around and then some monster came crashing in or Monroe’s lieutenants tried to resurrect her movement, and suddenly he didn’t have time for homework or studying anymore, and he flunked out of the program he’d worked so hard to get into, and his dream of being a vet was ruined once and for all?

Scott was just about to give that last paragraph one more try when the textbook was yanked unceremoniously out from under him.

“Hey!”

Luis ignored his protest and grabbed him by the arms to yank him up. The sudden motion was just startling enough to get Scott’s hackles up—not in the literal sense, thankfully; Scott’s control was good enough by now that no amount of unexpected manhandling by a human could make him pop his claws—but he only ended up in front of their shared closet.

“Get dressed,” Luis told him. “We’re going out.”

“What? Where?”

“There’s a party tonight, over by the green. I’m invited, and that means you’re invited. Congrats, you’ve officially been upgraded to my plus-one. You should be honored.”

Scott sent a long look back toward his abandoned books, drowning in the swamp of papers that was his desk. His superego screamed at him that he should _working,_ but honestly, the fried part of his brain was already out the door. He hadn’t been to a single party all semester. He’d passed up all previous invitations in favor of doing exactly what he’d been doing all night, and maybe that was why he barely knew anyone but Luis. He’d been so focused on his studies that he hadn’t made the time to get to know anyone else.

That was supposed to be a part of the college experience too, wasn’t it? Roommates, new friends, house parties, studying during the week and letting loose on the weekends. That was the normality Scott had been looking for when he came out here—the normality he had missed out on in high school—not just a degree.

“A party,” Scott said, testing out the word, rolling it around in his brain until it stopped sounding like _should be studying._ “Yeah. Yeah, okay. Let’s go.”

Luis slapped him on the back. “Sweet! We leave in ten.”

Scott grinned, suddenly excited. It had been a lot longer than just a few months since he’d been to a house party. The last couple of years had been so taken over by supernatural crises, be they monsters or hunter uprisings, they’d barely even stopped to acknowledge each others’ birthdays, much less throw any kind of celebratory affair. The more he thought about it, the more he warmed to the idea.

Fuck studying for the night; he was way overdue for some fun.

He threw on a clean tank top and the best of his jeans, the tight ones that looked _awesome_ but sort of restricted movement so he didn’t wear them very often for fear of being hindered in a fight. He even put a little bit of gel in his hair, laughing at himself in the mirror as he futzed around to get it just right. Once Luis deemed him party-ready, they were on their way, turning the radio up loud in Luis’ beat up truck and singing along.

They didn’t know all the words and they probably looked like idiots who’d been pre-gaming all afternoon, but Scott didn’t care because it was fun. He was having _fun,_ and was going to his first college party, and he was going to have to call Stiles tomorrow to tell him all about how awesome it had been. If anyone would appreciate him finally getting out of his dorm for a night of debauchery, it would be Stiles. He always insisted that Scott worked himself too hard.

They rolled up in front of a big house around ten. It wasn’t full to bursting yet, not like some of the bashes Scott had passed by that had people spilling out all over the lawn and hanging off the balconies and crawling on the roof, but they could still hear the music from the street. Well, _Scott_ had been hearing it for over a block, but that was fine. It had taken him a while, but he’d gotten good at reining his hearing in to more manageable levels. If he could handle heavy gunfire at close range, then he could probably handle dubstep.

He was out of the truck before Luis had even put it in park, bouncing on his feet. Luis laughed at him but he was pretty peppy too, feeding off of Scott’s high energy as they chased each other up the drive to the stoop. The front door was wide open, lights and music spilling out of the entrance hall, and Luis was quick to make his way inside. Scott jogged up the front steps after him and—

He stopped. Just short of the threshold, his feet brought him to a halt and wouldn’t budge.

It was louder here. Louder than gunfire, actually, now that Scott thought about it, or at least more sustained. Not quite as bad that one lacrosse party he’d been to senior year, with the bonfire and the booze. And the assassins, the ones who’d used music as a _weapon,_ the frequency tailor-made to fuck with werewolves. The party where he and Malia and Liam had almost been killed.

Scott shook his head. This music wasn’t like that. It was just normal music illegally downloaded and pumped through obnoxiously big speakers by coeds looking to get laid. There was nothing _sinister_ about that. He was being ridiculous.

Before he could try to force his foot to take that final step, Luis came jogging back into view, a clear plastic cup already in hand. There was some kind of red drink in it. Punch, probably. Spiked punch.

“Hey, man, what’s up?” He jerked his head toward the hallway behind him. “Come on, there’s a pool back there!”

A chill ran through Scott, his heart kicking in his chest like that was somehow a threat. He was shaking his head again before he even thought about it.

“I, uh…I left my phone in the truck,” he heard himself say. At least, he thought he said it. It was hard to hear over the rushing in his ears, louder even than the bass throbbing through the speakers. He didn’t wait to see if Luis answered. He jumped off the porch, nearly knocking over two girls in short dresses, and took off along the side of the house.

His hand shook when he tried to fish his phone out of his back pocket, so hard that it took him two tries. He had never been more grateful for speed dial because he didn’t think he had the coordination to punch in the right numbers. The four rings it took for Stiles to answer were plenty long enough to make Scott’s head spin with how quick his breath was coming.

_“Sup, Scottie?”_

“Stiles, I can’t—”

It wasn’t a panic attack, not quite. Scott had only had one of those in his life, but it wasn’t an experience he was ever going to forget. He didn’t feel like he was literally dying, but it wasn’t far off either. He forced himself to swallow down the growl clogging his throat.

_“Scott? Scott, buddy, are you there? Is something wrong?”_

“Can you just—” Scott forced out. “Just talk for a minute. Talk to me. Anything, I don’t care.”

_“Wow, vague, okay. Uh, did I tell you about the stunt Lindsey pulled in PT the other day?”_

He had told Scott about that, but it didn’t matter. Scott didn’t actually care what he was saying right now, just that the cadence of his voice was familiar and comforting. He let the words fill up his head, painting pictures of Stiles and his classmates goofing off instead of all the memories that wanted to force their way back in. By the time Lindsey had gotten soundly chastised by their trainer, Scott’s muscles had unclenched enough to let him slump back against the wall.

_“Scottie, you back with me now?”_

“Yeah. Yeah, I’m here.”

Stiles let out a heavy breath, just a little bit shaky around the edges. _“Okay, good. Now you wanna tell me what that was about?”_

Scott let out a sigh of his own, head thumping back against the wall. He could feel the reverberations of the bass through the wood. “I went to a party.”

_“Did something happen?”_

“No. I didn’t even go inside. I couldn’t make it through the door.”

_“Like, mountain ash barrier kind of couldn’t? Or just…couldn’t?”_

Scott rubbed his free hand over his face, sliding it up to tug at his hair until it stung. “There was nothing stopping me. There were no threats anywhere, it was all totally normal, and I still couldn’t—” He cut off, resisting the urge to start running, to run and run until it stopped feeling like something was chasing him.

_“Scott?”_

“There are no threats,” Scott repeated. “But it _feels_ like there are. Or like there will be. Like there _has_ to be one, somewhere, and I just can’t see it yet.” He thumps his head against the wall again, eyes closing. “It’s so stupid.”

_“Well, at least we can be stupid together, then.”_

Scott opened his eyes again, squinting up at the open sky. He made a questioning noise.

_“Dude, I’ve been avoiding parties all year.”_

“But…you always make it sound like you’re having so much fun,” Scott said. In his most academically exhausted moments, he’d been jealous of Stiles. He always seemed to have stories to tell of his new school friends and the mischief they got up to.

 _“Yeah, I am, totally,”_ Stiles said readily. _“Just not at parties. Parties are, like, anxiety-central. I have been to way too many parties that ended in complete disaster to want anything to do with them anymore. We both have. Remember Lydia’s, sophomore year?”_

Scott could hear the splashing from around back of the house, people shouting as they got shoved into the pool there. They were laughing, but all he could think of was Matt screaming that he couldn’t swim, the flash of scales, the hallucinations of Allison with the kanima on top of her, the bitter-tingly feeling of wolfsbane on his tongue.

“I try not to.”

 _“The black light party at Derek’s,”_ Stiles went on. _“Demon ninjas attacking all over the place. That was fun.”_

Scott rolled his eyes. “Not fun at all.”

_“Nope, not a bit. And there was that party where my childhood friend got kidnapped and then subsequently murdered.”_

“That party where Liam broke out of literal chains and jumped out a window to run through the city on a full moon,” Scott put in.

_“Yes! Malia tried to kill me that night too, but we worked through it. It was fine. Only mildly terrifying.”_

“I got musically drugged and doused in gasoline by an assassin at a lacrosse party that one time,” Scott offered up.

Stiles hummed in agreement. _“I wasn’t there for that one, but yeah, it sounded traumatic.”_

“That rave too,” Scott said, sliding down the side of the house to sit on the ground. The ground was a little damp and it would probably leave stains on his nice jeans, but he really didn’t care anymore. “Searching for the kanima. When Victoria tried to kill me via wolfsbane-induced asthma attack.”

 _“Doubly traumatic!”_ Stiles declared. _“See, there’s a pattern here, Scott. And that pattern is that parties suck, big time. Our anxiety is totally justified after the nightmare experiences we’ve had.”_

“I guess.” Scott tore up a few blades of grass, rolling them around in his fingers. If he strained his hearing a little, he could hear Luis on the other side of the wall, giving some stupid pickup line to a girl from his improv class. She wasn’t impressed, but Luis laughed it off and moved on. “It just sucks, you know? Everybody’s in there having fun, and I’m out here alone with my inescapable sense of dread.”

Stiles snorted. _“Boy, do I know that feel, buddy.”_ There was a creak of springs as Stiles presumably dropped down onto his bed. _“And yeah, it sucks. A lot of things suck. It sucks that a backfiring car almost gives me a panic attack because of that time I thought I got shot in the head and was actually dead but just hadn’t realized it yet. It sucks that Malia can’t stand to drive at night. It sucks that Lydia literally can’t tell the difference between reality and hallucination half the time. It sucks that the smell of gasoline still makes you sick—don’t think I haven’t noticed that.”_

Scott flushed, but he couldn’t deny it. It was a good thing he could hold his breath for five minutes at a time or else he’d have a hard time gassing up his bike without thinking of what it felt like to be soaked with the stuff, waiting for the flame to catch.

“Okay, okay. I think I get the point.”

 _“The point is,”_ Stiles said, _“it’s not stupid. It barely even qualifies as irrational with your life. You know, the whole, ‘is it really paranoia if they’re actually out to get you’ principle.”_

As true as that was: “I really don’t think anyone at this random house party I didn’t even know I was going to until half an hour ago is out to get me.”

 _“Probably not,”_ Stiles conceded. _“So maybe you should try again, then. Take a deep breath, pick a calming mantra, and see if you can make it inside. I’ll even stay on the line, if you want me to.”_

Scott couldn’t help but smile at that, warmth and fondness rising up chase the last of the shaky, hollow feeling out of his chest. The buzzing of his phone against his ear—undoubtedly a text from Luis asking where he’d gone, or if he was okay, because it really didn’t take fifteen minutes to retrieve a forgotten phone from the end of the driveway—made him jump, but that was okay. He was okay.

Taking a deep breath as advised, Scott pushed himself back to his feet, rolling his shoulders and stretching the tension from his neck. “It’s okay. I think I can make it on my own now. But thanks.”

He could hear the smile in Stiles’ voice as he said, _“Anytime, bro. Call me tomorrow, tell me about your wild night. I want all the deets. You know I live vicariously through you so you have to tell me everything. Even the dirty stuff._ Especially _the dirty stuff.”_

“Goodnight, Stiles.”

He hung up on Stiles’ laugh, smiling down at the ridiculous contact picture on his screen before it went dark. The text he’d gotten _was_ from Luis, asking if he wanted to go home. Scott kept the text up as he rounded the house, mounting the porch and facing down the open door again. It was just a door. Just a house full of drunk coeds having fun and a good friend inside who wanted him to have fun too.

He took another deep breath. The flutter of nerves was still there, the urge to cover his ears and check every drink for purple flowers, but Luis appeared at the end of the hallway with a big grin on his face.

Scott grinned back, tucked his phone back into his pocket, and stepped.

**Author's Note:**

> [rebloggable on tumblr!](http://clotpolesonly.tumblr.com/post/184034330926/all-dressed-up-going-nowhere-fast)


End file.
